ESG Disclosure and Shareholders Value: The Moderating Role of Gender Diversity (Published)
The persistent adoption of unsustainable business practices and inadequate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure systems has weakened shareholder confidence and reduced shareholder value. Consequently, this study examined the effect of ESG disclosure on shareholder value, with gender diversity as a moderating variable. An ex post facto research design was adopted, and secondary data were utilized. The population of this study comprised 52 listed manufacturing companies, and purposive sampling technique was employed to select 44 companies. Panel regression analysis was used to analyse the data, and the statistical package employed was STATA 17. The findings of the study revealed that environmental performance disclosure (coeff. = -0.132 [0.030]) has significant negative effect on dividend yield, social performance disclosure (coeff. = 0.001 [0.977]) has nonsignificant effect on dividend yield; governance performance disclosure (coeff. = -0.357 [0.021]) has significant negative effect on dividend yield and gender diversity significantly moderated the relationship between ESG disclosures and shareholder value of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. It was thus concluded that ESG disclosure exhibit limited direct value relevance but become significantly more meaningful when conditioned on gender diversity. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended, among others, that the management of manufacturing firms should promote balanced and competence-driven board composition, ensuring that female directors are actively involved in ESG-related decision-making processes, as their presence has been shown to influence how sustainability disclosures translate into shareholder value.
Keywords: Dividend Yield, ESG Disclosure, Gender diversity, critical mass, shareholders’ value